


Quadrille

by StealingPennies



Category: The Talisman Ring - Georgette Heyer
Genre: F/M, Infertility, Infidelity, M/M, Marriage, Regency
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:00:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21834079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StealingPennies/pseuds/StealingPennies
Summary: “Unthinkable.” He eyed his wife intently. “You agree it is unthinkable?”  She picked up her brush and gave her hair a few unnecessary strokes. “Sarah,” he prompted, deceptively gentle.The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
Relationships: Ludovic Lavenham/Eustacie de Vauban, Ludovic Lavenham/Tristram Shield, Tristram Shield/Sarah Thane
Kudos: 12





	Quadrille

**Author's Note:**

> Oh! So this is not the light frothy romp I intended to write. However, I did set out to write to Tristram/Luodovic slash. Only it turns out that I like all the characters and can't see any of these people cheating lightly. All broken. Sorry. Hope, at least, the characterisation more or less holds. xxSP.

“If only I were dead!” declared Eustacie, disconsolately selecting a honey and sugar pastry. She raised it to her lips then put it down again unbitten. “I shall go to Paris and surrender myself to Madame Guillotine. _Enfin_ , you will marry again and father a dozen heirs.” 

A tear trickled down her cheek.

“Never!” protested Ludovic. He’d fallen in love with Eustacie’s volatile spirits but with each disappointment the lows grew more frequent, the fancies more desperate. He bought her flowers. Jewels. The prettiest chestnut mare. A silky-eared spaniel that dozed at her feet. Still she wept. 

He knelt beside her, brushing her face with his thumb. “Sweeting! Don’t cry! If there’s fault it’s as likely mine as yours.”

“No! No, Ludovic! You must not say such things. It is me! All me!” But the look she gave him said otherwise. “You will forget me quickly. Although you might wear black always in my memory.”

He silenced her with a kiss. “I should drink myself into a stupor and follow you to the grave before the day was out!”

She hitched a laugh. “That would certainly be bad. Perhaps I shall not die. At least not yet.”

Ludovic glanced up. Around him the gilded walls and accumulated grandeur of nine previous Barons silently judged. Eustacie retrieved her pastry and began to eat.

*  
Tristram preferred cards to dancing but none-the-less he accompanied his wife to balls because Sarah enjoyed them. He clasped her hand in the darkness of their carriage home.

“Eustacie was in high spirits,” remarked Sarah, apropos of nothing.

“Ludovic played deep,” he countered.

“I do not believe they exchanged a word all night.”

He squeezed her fingers. “Let be. It is none of our concern.” 

*  
“No.” Tristram did not bother to hide his disgust. “I cannot believe you ask such a thing. Every feeling revolts.”

Ludovic’s hand tightened around the stem of his glass the rings on his fingers glinting ruby and gold. “I did not ask you to like it.”

“And Eustacie?” Tristram kept his voice low, conscious of their surroundings. Brookes was no place for a mill. “Does she like it? This betrayal of your marriage vows.”

“Don’t you dare!” Abruptly the glass cracked, wine spilling blood-red across the table. “You think she would…that we…if there was…” Ludovic controlled himself with a visible effort. He rose and sketched an ironic bow. “My regrets for having troubled you. But know, if any word of this gets out, if there is any scandal attaching to my wife, I shall kill you.”

*  
“Outrageous!” agreed Sarah when Tristram relayed the conversation. 

“Unthinkable.” He eyed his wife intently. “You agree it is unthinkable?” She picked up her brush and gave her hair a few unnecessary strokes. “Sarah,” he prompted, deceptively gentle.

“They must be very desperate,” she said finally.

His face hardened. “You knew! You knew and said nothing.” 

She shrugged. “Eustacie came to me, oh, a year ago. She had read of such a..a miracle child in some romance. I told her that it would not do. That it was not _comme il fait._ ”

“Not _comme il fait_ ,” repeated Tristram dryly. “That is certainly one way of looking at it.”

“I do not think she fully understood what she was suggesting.”

“Ludovic certainly did.”

“Yes,” agreed Sarah moving to his side. “He would. They have been married four years now.”

“Others have waited,” said Tristram, uncomfortably. “Our own son is not yet two.”

““You were prepared to marry Eustacie once,” noted Sarah. 

“A mistake that I am not eager to revisit!” he retorted. “I cannot imagine anything less desirable. Or that you would continence such an occurrence.”

“I don’t!” she protested, “But I know what it is to want a child.”

They fell again into uneasy silence. 

After a while Tristram spoke. “It is not to be thought of.”

“No,” said Sarah. In this light her eyes seemed almost silver. “But you are thinking of it or you too would have said nothing.” She further unravelled the thought. “Not for Eustacie, but for Ludovic, because you have always been there for him through every foolish scrape and drunken escapade right up to murder.”

“Ludovic is not a murderer.” This at least he could refute.

“You did not think so at the time.”

*  
Will Sir Tristram be kind?” asked Eustacie twisting the lace of her robe. “I am not afraid, you understand, and Ludovic insists he will not leave us, only I do not know that I like to share.”

Sarah perched on a low stool forming a still counterpoint to her restless pacing. 

“No one does,” she said.

“Yes, but –,” began Eustacie, breaking off abruptly as mortified comprehension swept through her. She continued with painful dignity. “I did not think. I wanted so much, and Ludovic also, but I see it was selfish. It is not to be. We cannot always have what we want.”

“No, my dear, we cannot,” said Sarah folding Eustacie into her arms. 

*  
Eustacie had delivered her speech and left. Ludovic made to follow. 

“I should go,” he said.

“Stay!” 

Ludovic was thrown back seven years. This same room and Tristram’s voice, the one certainty in a world ripped apart. Then he had been dazed and confused, swept along by Tristam’s and Sylvester’s insistence that he must leave the country immediately. As a boy he would not cry when his life was tumbling around him. As a man the instinct was the same. 

“Why?” Bitterness laced his voice. “You said it was a fool’s gamble. You were right. Isn’t that enough?”

Tristram held himself very still. He spoke harshly, as if with difficulty, “I promised you my seed. That promise holds. Whether you redeem it is up to you.” 

Play and pay. Ludovic was a gambler at heart. Perhaps also a fool. Tristram was watching him with his steady gaze. There as he had always been there. Ludovic did not reply but he raised his hands and began unlacing the elaborate ties of his shirt.


End file.
